Wednesday, January 23, 2008

After discovering that I was going to need new brake pads, I had to justify the expenditure to my wife. The conversation went something like this:

"Honey? I need to spend some money on bike parts."

"What? Why? Can it wait until pay day?"

"I need to fix my brakes. I can't ride my bike the way it is. I can't stop. It's dangerous."

"How Much?"

"Cheaper than a tank of gas in the Focus and it should last me at least a year."

"Oh, okay."

In all this, though, is the lesson that you do need to set aside $50 or so on occasion for bike repairs. It sure the hell beats setting aside $600 for the random car repair. It always seems random bike failures usually result in a $40-60 expenditure, whereas random car problems end up setting people back more than $500 at a shop.

8 comments:

And for most, no better reason exists for leaving the car in the garage and taking the bike out instead.

I've lamented, now and again, the expenses I've had gearing up for the winter. $25 here. $50 there. It adds up. All in all, though, it pays itself off very quickly when compared against gas prices and auto maintenance.

The pads that I pulled off were the ones that were on it at the bike shop when I bought it in November of 2006. The only way I can say they'll last a year is because this is a mountain bike and I don't use it for packing on the miles. It's a foul-weather beater and a singletrack machine only. I might take it on paved paths or on one of the slow group rides just for giggles on occasion, but this bike doesn't see nearly as many miles as my road bike does.

One year ago I got my wife to agree to making a change in our household budget. Yes, we have a budget, we stick to it, and it works great for us. The issue, I am carless and she isn't. The problem, from my viewpoint, was that when her car needed repairs it came out of our joint household budget. But when my bike needed parts replaced or repaired, I had to pay for it out of my own pocket money. I convinced her that transportataion is transportation regardless of the mode. We renamed our automotive budget category to transportation. Now all my bike commuting related expenses and bus fares (if needed, I bicycle most days now)come out of our joint transporation expense category. Seems like a no-brainer now, but it was a major step for us.

We're getting there, but we don't have a strict budget right now except for what goes towards bills. Everything else is kind of mashed up and used. I'm trying to get us to a point where all forseeable expenditures are accounted for (our various vices, food, transportation, etc)

I have about 7,000 miles on my current Kool Stop pads, and they're still going. That includes plenty of gritty, sloppy, winter weather and many screeching stops at the bottom of some darn steep Duluth hills.

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